Eyes On: Here After

The latest location for your Insta hit-list.

London’s White City has long been considered with the capital’s media hub. It was formerly the home of Television Centre, the BBC’s base as well as White City Place, the BBC’s Media Village – both of which will reopen later this year following a major redevelopment.

As part of White City’s re-birth, curators of all-things-quirky, Craig & Karl have applied their artistic flair to a derelict petrol station on Wood Lane, manifesting in technicolour art piece Here After, the pair’s first major public art work in London. Featuring an array of bold and bright lines, Here After pays homage to the area’s media focused heritage with a colour palette that pays tribute to the bright hues seen on a television test card; the petrol station also turns into a luminous landscape by night.

The design duo, who, despite working collaboratively on a plethora of bold projects, live on separate sides of the world, said of their creative process: “We drew on the vernacular of petrol stations with their striped hoardings in bold colours. But, here they’re spliced and patch-worked together in an almost chaotic fashion as though the site is reinventing itself from the fragments of its past. As we developed the artwork, we focused on the site itself – it unmistakably retains the appearance of a petrol station, but without any of the functional aspects usually associated with it. So we saw this more as its second life or wonder years, which led us to use the words ‘Here After’ as a reference to heaven or utopia. Now that the petrol station has fulfilled its duty so to speak, it’s free to enjoy itself.”

“The vibrant bands of colour and multi-directional arrows reference a television test screen, synonymous with the iconic Television Centre – former BBC headquarters – across the road,” they continue, “as well as standard road markings; all turned on their head to suggest a new way forward for the area.”

Don’t know about you but we just marked a new x on our Insta hit-list.